1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus capable of receiving print data from an information processing apparatus and printing the received print data. Furthermore, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus capable of transmitting print data to the printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an office environment, where a plurality of users work, a printing apparatus can be provided for common uses. In particular, a multifunction peripheral is operable by many users as a printer, a copying machine, a facsimile machine, and a scanner. In a situation where a user inputs copy settings on an operation panel, a multifunction peripheral may output printed sheets based on a print job requested by another user.
In this case, a user performing copy settings may see and know the contents of other user's printing product output from the multifunction peripheral. Furthermore, during a printout operation of a print job, the multifunction peripheral does not start another print processing (e.g., printout operation) and accordingly other users are required to wait unit preceding print jobs are completed.
In addition, if a multifunction peripheral has only one discharge tray, printed sheets of a print job requested by one user may be mixed with printed sheets of a different print job requested by another user.
To solve such problems, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 8-223340, a multifunction peripheral can stop outputting printed sheets of a print job requested by an external user when the multifunction peripheral is manipulated by a different user. In this case, if a user's operation is not made on the multifunction peripheral in a predetermined time, the multifunction peripheral restarts outputting printed sheets of the suspended print job.
According to this technique, a user can easily manipulate a multifunction peripheral and can quickly finish copy settings without waiting for the copy processing requested by an external user to be completed. Furthermore, the contents of a print job requested by an external user cannot be seen and known by other user manipulating the multifunction peripheral. However, since the multifunction peripheral is operable by another user while a print job is being performed, another user may have a chance to see printed sheets output from the multifunction peripheral.
Moreover, according to the above described technique, the multifunction peripheral does not check a relationship between a user manipulating the operation panel and a user currently executing print job. Therefore, the multifunction peripheral may stop outputting printed sheets of a print job even if a user of the print job is identical to the manipulating user. As a result, the multifunction peripheral can reduce the processing efficiency.
If an external user can identify another user manipulating a multifunction peripheral, the external user can determine to stop or suspend transmitting a print job from an external apparatus and the above problem is solved. However, the external user typically does not know the presence of any user currently manipulating the multifunction peripheral.